


Smokin' Bad Luck

by Undertaker17



Category: Gorilla My Love
Genre: Fire, Gen, Intervention, Light Swearing, aka: writing a pre-exiting story with a different character's pov, did this for my english class, dude compares a girl's skin color to overcooked bread, idk probably, idk what tags to use for this, is that racist?, no beta we die like mortals, slight racism if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:14:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29769144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Undertaker17/pseuds/Undertaker17
Summary: This is an intervention, where I took an already existing short story and wrote it in someone else's pov. This is based on Toni Cade Bambara's short story "Gorilla, My Love". Here I chose to write the point of view of the "manager" who works in the theater where a fair bit of the original story takes place. This story is set in more modern times, minus the pandemic because obviously who goes to movie theaters right now?





	Smokin' Bad Luck

**Author's Note:**

> You should totally check out the original story. It's pretty funny.  
> Here's a video with audio of someone reading the story for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2EvMCWfn08&t=788s

Today just isn’t Lloyd’s day. He woke up with the chills, the onset of a cold, but he couldn’t get out of his shift at the local dollar theater. It’s Easter, and most employees have taken the day off to spend with family. So he’d be the only manager there until the night crew started clocking in around six.

So, Lloyd put on his uniform, took some medicine, and hoped to god that it’d be a slow day. Even if, because it’s a holiday, that wasn’t likely to be the case. 

The roads were calm on the drive to work, but Lloyd wouldn’t let himself take that as a good sign. It wasn’t a long commute, only a few minutes at best. He saw the dinky old sign of the theater in the distance, it somehow looked dirtier than the day before- though he knew for a fact that’s how it always looked. As he pulled into the small parking lot, driving around the back to employee parking, he could feel the cold sweat building on his forehead. 

It occurred to him then that in his self misery this morning, he forgot to do the majority of his morning routine. He didn’t shower, he didn’t shave, he hardly even remembered to put on deodorant. With a heavy sigh, he found a cheap fast-food napkin in the passenger seat to wipe his forehead with. He threw it behind him to be lost somewhere in the unused backseats and resigned himself to his fate.

The theater is an old building, been around since the late ’60s. With how old and dusty the place smells, one would think it hadn’t been cleaned since then either. It’s been updated a bit of course, but only the things necessary to screen the more recent movies. 

Lloyd clocked himself in and quickly got to work, which is mostly paperwork and babysitting his staff. Recently, they’ve gotten a new movie in. An independent Easter film of some kind. The owners don’t normally allow independent works show, but movies are staying in traditional theaters longer. This means they can’t come to this little dollar one until those screenings are done. That is to say, this place currently has more screens than movies. A rare opportunity for independent artists to get their films out there if they haven’t been picked up by big distributors at film festivals.

This one is called “Gorilla, My Love”, not that the title says anything about the movie itself. Given it’s an Easter film, it’s gotta be about Jesus or ‘good Christian morals’ in some capacity. The poster doesn’t help any either, no art abilities went into creating it. Just some clip-art-looking letters on a cloudy background and that’s it. Already, he can see a few complaints written up by early morning movie buffs. He ain’t happy about it, but there’ll likely be more complaints to come. 

Just thinking about it makes him want to go out for a quick smoke. He tries to not fall into that habit at work, but angry customers are a little much sometimes.

It’s around noon when a large batch of customers start to file in, most of them choosing to go into the independent film without knowing anything about it. Lloyd, knowing what he does about how people react to it, decides to go find miss Brandy. Lotta Brandy is the best theater matron this establishment has, he’s seen her take on angry customers and attitude laced teenagers alike and come out on top. Her fierce reputation among the staff, and even with regular customers, has earned her the nickname “Thunderbuns”. If anyone was gonna keep these movie watchers in line for this “Gorilla, My love” film, it’d definitely be her. 

He found her in theater number 2, helping the two teens employed as cleaning staff sweep up popcorn from the carpet. Though it’s so dilapidated and stained, one can hardly call it carpet anymore.

“Hey, Lotta?” He says as he approaches her, trying to smile despite how awful he probably looks. Sweat is dripping down his back and he thanks himself for remembering to put on an undershirt. “Mind keeping an eye on the crowd going into that Easter movie? This batch has a lot of unattended kids going in, and I just know they’ll be starting a riot once the lights are low.” 

“Sure thing, hun.” Lotta gives him a knowing look,” I’ll keep them little chits in line, don’t you worry.” 

“I knew I could count on you,” he feels relief knowing that she’d take the brunt of customer anger. “Thank you so much!” He high tails it out of there, not willing to chance her going back on her statement. 

Lloyd sits in his office for the duration of the movie screening. It’s an hour and a half long production, shorter than any of the recent Disney or Marvel films by far. However, it was long enough that he briefly forgot it’s his duty to pacify any customers that got past Lotta’s ‘take no shit’ attitude. 

He only remembered his managerial obligations when there came a knock at his office door, the strength of it promising an unhappy face on the other side. He was correct, as on the other side of the door is an angry lookin’ 4th grader. 

She’s a colored girl, skin a dark brown like an overcooked loaf of bread. Her hair braided into cornrows, the ends tied up with obnoxiously colorful beads that make little clicking sounds as they knock into each other with her head movements. 

He immediately recognizes this girl as part of a family that visits the theater often. The Vale family, if he remembers correctly. They’re a fine family, but a bit headstrong if you ask him. Their daughter is no doubt the same, and he ain’t in the mood to deal with an unaccompanied child. Too bad for him, it seems like she’s not in the mood to give up.

“What is it?” He asks, though it only seems to make the girl angrier. Despite his protests, she uses her little leg to push the door open and walks right past him into the seat in front of his desk. 

“Look you pasty crook,” she says in her girlish high pitched voice,” I went into that movie thinkin’ I was gonna see some Gorillas. But guess what?” Lloyd says nothing as he’s still a little unsure how to go about this unexpected turn of events. “There were no Gorillas. I want my money back, that goes for my baby brother Jason, and my big brood too.”

“Look kid,” he rolls his eyes with a sigh. “It ain’t my fault you chose to assume the film was about gorillas. You should have looked the film up beforehand if you wanted to know what you were going into.” Obviously, he knew she probably didn’t have a way to do that. But if he gave out refunds every time someone didn’t like the movie they chose to go see, well, this theater wouldn’t be so cheap. “It’s Easter, most films this time of year are about religion, get over it.” Lloyd knew he was showing a bad attitude, but he didn’t feel good and had no want to justify himself to an eight-year-old. 

With an angry pinched face, the girl shuffled out of his office. Lloyd took a deep breath the moment she was out his office door and made the decision he’d take a smoke break to avoid any other angry movie seers. 

Problem is, he can’t find his lighter. He could’ve sworn he’d left it on his desk, yet, it’s nowhere to be found. He searched under all the paperwork, looked on the floor to see if it fell, he even looked through his pockets but still came up empty. 

He was exiting the office to go search his car for it- thinking maybe he just imagined bringing it inside with him -when he noticed something was off. Most people were either in a showing or walking out back to the exit doors that go straight to the parking lot. The staff was busy preparing fresh popcorn and faking their cleaning tasks to notice something wasn’t right. 

Lloyd didn’t see anything, not at first. He could smell something burning but saw no immediate reason for it. The lighter was put on the back burner of his mind as he searched the lobby for the source of the smell. It didn’t take long for him to notice that the old vending machine in the far back corner of the lobby was _literally on fire_.

The machine looked untouched on the outside, but everything on the inside- the candy, chips, gum- was aflame. It took only a few seconds for the very top of the machine to finally catch aflame, and at that moment all Lloyd could think was “this just ain’t my day”. 

After a brief moment of shock, adrenaline kicked in and he rushed to behind the food counter where he knew a fire alarm was. The very moment he pulled it, a piercing alarm rang through the building. The old theater didn’t have a sprinkler system of any kind, so the alarm would just send notifications to the local police and fire departments. It’d be up to the theater staff- aka him -to clear the building of people.

“What the hell is going on!” Lotta comes waddling out from the hall, her eyes darting around the lobby. When her eyes land on the still-ob-fire vending machine,” Oh hell!”

“Lotta, please go help the other matrons escort people out of the theaters, use the back exits!” Lloyd wouldn’t say he’s a good leader who knows what to do ever, which is partially why he wants miss thunderbuns on the case. Also, because customers are gonna be angry, and he’s got more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

“Yes sir!” Lotta doesn’t stick around a moment longer and starts to corral the small crowd of customers towards the back of the building. Thankfully, they’re a small enough business that even on a holiday, they don’t have a great number of customers. 

Once Lloyd is sure that Lotta has everything under control customer-wise, he sweeps the front of the building to guide all remaining staff and lost customers out the same way. After that, he grabs the fire extinguisher from the back office and attempts to use it to quell the now half-melted vending machine. It takes a solid two minutes to figure out how it works, but he gets there in the end. 

Everything after that is a bit of a blur. The emergency services come and make sure everyone is alright, the police question the staff and what customers decided to stick around, and in the end, Lloyd has to go back inside to retrieve the camera footage for the police to investigate. 

All the while, his staff, and the police are saying things like “You did the right thing” and “it was so brave of you to put the fire out yourself”. He didn’t feel brave though, in those hours after the event- he only felt tired. 

Later the following day, he and his boss will watch footage of a little girl stealing the lighter he’d forgotten in the chaos of the fire, and using it along with some napkins to set the inside of the vending machine aflame. 

Lloyd didn’t lose his job, a relief he didn’t know he needed, instead he was given the next week off with full pay.

“It’s because of you and your quick thinking that my building didn’t go all up in flames,” his boss spoke with genuine words of gratitude,” you deserve some time to recover.”

When he got home after reviewing the footage with the police, Lloyd found himself throwing out all his packs of cigs and spare lighters. Every time he felt the urge to go out and smoke, he could only picture his lungs being like that vending machine. All fine looking on the outside, but aflame and melting on the inside. He just couldn’t fathom lighting up a cig again after that. 

Suppose it’s the only good thing that came from the whole event. 

**Author's Note:**

> The original story doesn't give anyone in the theater a name besides Brandy "Thunderbuns", which left me a lot of leeway on names. Obviously, I changed a lot of the story for this, and it could be argued this isn't an intervention at all given it's not the whole story of Gorilla, My Love. 
> 
> I did this for my English Intro to fiction class :> might update with my score for funzies.


End file.
